Finding
by Agent Mercury
Summary: Etna, an OC based on a William Gibson concept, stumbles over a drunk in her alley for the thousandth time. Only this time it's not a drunk. It's an agent. Post Revolutions.
1. Chapter 1

I do not own, nor do I claim to own any characters from the Matrix trilogy. I do own the character Etna, but she is based upon a concept from the "Neuromancer" series by William Gibson. I do not own the concept.

Thanks for reading, and be sure to leave a review!

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The guy had seen better days, that was certain. He was lying half-propped against the gray bricks of the Gertis building, effectively blocking the alley to my apartment building. I didn't live in the best part of town, so I wasn't just terribly startled by his presence. I silently wished I had a dime for every drunk I'd seen blocking my alley. If he was dead, though, I'd better call someone to come pick him up. Balancing my Chinese takeout in one hand, I leaned over to check for a pulse with the other. I stepped back, very startled. I hadn't needed to touch him to realize what I was looking at.

Agent.

Old instincts kicked in hard, and I nearly dropped my takeout as my body tried to do several very conflicting things, including vault over the agent, yell, reach for the gun I didn't have, and run backward out of the alley, all at the same time. I have to admit it was a very ungraceful maneuver for someone who's been at it as many years as I have, and illogically, I was grateful the agent was passed out. It meant he hadn't seen me acting like a newbie out for her first jaunt in the Matrix. I laughed darkly at myself; I had better reasons to be happy this agent was unconscious.

It hit me then, suddenly, feeling a little like a two by four. This agent was unconscious. What in the hell? Agents don't pass out and they don't get knocked out. Few have been able to actually "kill" one (the legend of Trinity reached mythical proportions when she reportedly took one out at point blank range), but any time it happened, the agent disappeared, only to be replaced by the body of the coppertop they'd taken over during the pursuit. I never got close enough to an agent to witness this phenomenon, but I can only imagine it could be pretty traumatic for the "successful" rebel.

But this was definitely an agent. After this long in the Matrix, I could tell these things. Slightly between worlds, I can see both construct and code. I saw both a bruised, very battered man and the malicious code most rebels spend their lives dodging & escaping. And as it had so many times in my longer-than-usual life, my curiosity got the better of my sound judgment. With some creative jostling, I got my Chinese take-out into my messenger bag, took the agent by the arms, and hauled him down the street into my apartment lobby.

By the time I'd dragged the limp form into my apartment, I was thanking my luck at having a ground-level room. I was fully aware that, in the Matrix, I had no muscles to become fatigued nor lungs for my labored breath, but that doesn't make it feel less real. I managed to get him up on the couch, mess that he was, and pulled up a chair to study him while I ate my beef & broccoli, feet propped on the coffee table.

I was a scientist in a "former life", owing to that infernal curiosity that was always getting the better of me. A vulcanologist, to be specific, but I'd been fascinated by any and all branches of science, from botany to physics. As a result of all those years of patient, dedicated study of just about everything, I must say I was (and still am) a remarkable observer. He was filthy, and his suit was torn near to shreds. He had the marks of having been in one serious throw-down, as evidenced by footprints all over the fabric and bruises showing through what was left. Several things about this agent, though, were immediately noticeable as "not right": his suit was black instead of the indeterminate green they usually are, his glasses were the wrong shape (at least, judging from the bit of them still in evidence, swinging from his lapel), and he had no earpiece.

The last point caused me to choke on a piece of broccoli and nearly sent me flying over backward. I kept my ear to the ground, and like everyone else, I'd lived through this war. I knew about The One and I knew about the machines and I knew what had gone down. Like most programs and unlike most people, however, I remembered being copied over and assimilated into what must be the first real virus the Matrix had known. Smith.

The man lying on my couch.


	2. Chapter 2

I was on the phone faster than most people can blink. My hand shook a little as the phone rang on the other end, and I stared at Smith, barely blinking. If I blinked he might disappear and then we wouldn't know where he was, which was only slightly worse than knowing he was lying on my couch.

Seraph answered. "Seraph! The Oracle, quick!" I hissed.

"Etna?" he asked, calm serenity never giving way. "A moment, please."

In the next minute I was babbling incoherently into the phone. Yet another trait of the scientific community: I could observe, calculate, and come to astoundingly accurate conclusions, but put me under the pressure of actually explaining to someone and I was useless. The Oracle understands things without human assistance though, and had no trouble deciphering what I was telling her.

Fifteen minutes later she was in my living room, having come the 2 blocks between our apartments escorted by Seraph and with Sati in tow. "Are you sure it's okay to bring her here?" I asked. "With...him, and all?"

Sati was looking at Smith with curiosity. She was entirely too close for my comfort, even laying one hand on his arm. The other clutched a bento box wrapped in a Hello Kitty kerchief. I don't know what she was looking for, if anything, but I knew that she, Seraph, and the Oracle all remembered precisely what I did; we'd all been part of Smith at one point. We'd all been copied over. I was a little abashed that such a small girl (program?) was entirely unafraid of the supine form on the couch, when I could barely bring myself within 3 feet. "He's not so bad, once you get to know him," she smiled.

"She'll be fine, dear," said the Oracle. "So this is how you found him, eh? Excuse me, Sati. Thank you, dear," she said, moving Sati to one side gently. She crouched low to look into Smith's face. Hand under his chin, she turned his head from side to side. She stood again, and turned to look at me. She stared at me for a moment, and I knew that look. She nodded.

"Oh please don't--" I started, but clapped my mouth shut at her raised eyebrow. One is careful in the presence of Oracles. I know I visibly winced though, just the same.

"He'll wake up soon enough. Be here when he does." I opened my mouth again, but she had that look again. She nodded again, firmly. "It was good that you found him, Etna."

I didn't like the way she emphasized "you". I looked desperately at Seraph, who gave me a little shrug. My mouth opened and closed. I really had nothing to say to this; what could I say? A little tug on my frayed denim jacket sleeve startled me into looking down. Sati was pressing the bento box into my hand. "This is for him." As the Oracle & Seraph were opening the door to go, she tugged harder. I dropped to one knee. "Tell him if he promises to be good, I will make the sky pretty for him." Her face went deadly serious as only the very young can do. "But he has to promise."

"I...I'll tell him," I stammered. I was still not grasping the idea that I had to interact with Smith on ANY level, much less elicit a promise from him to "be good" for a 7-year-old program girl. Sati was satisfied, though, and smiled at me. She left with Seraph & Oracle, the image of the child with her doting grandmother & uncle.

I looked down at the container of beef & broccoli still clutched in my left hand. One of my chopsticks had fallen out at some point. I put the whole thing on the table. It tasted a little like dust now, and it's not like I really needed to eat food in the Matrix anyway. Old habits die hard, and I had always liked the taste of food far too much to give it up. But things were a little overwhelming at this moment.

I re-arranged my recliner so that it faced the couch and plopped into it with my laptop. I'd planned on browsing the internet, maybe wasting a little time, but I found myself completely distracted by Smith. The program that had tried to end existence was on my couch. Most people would forgive me for being distracted.

I was human once, and I still have those habits. The man was a mess, and he was on my couch. I sighed at my own complete idiocy. I sighed all the way into the bathroom and back out again with the bowl of warm water & the towels. Somewhere between moving the coffee table and removing the jacket from the still-unconscious Smith, I began to mutter at myself.

"You've been in here for HOW long? You get out of breath, you blush, you sigh, you eat, and you TALK to yourself." I rolled my eyes at me. "And now you are washing non-existent dirt off a non-existent man so he can't get it on your non-effin'-existent couch." I dabbed & rubbed as much dirt off him as I could, and I must say he looked almost presentable by the time I was done. If he hadn't been wearing the battered remnants of an agent suit. I had turned to gather up the towels & now-filthy water bowl when his hand leapt from his chest where I'd laid it and wrapped its fingers around my throat.

"Who are you?" he hissed in a deep voice. Completely paralyzed with fear, I was staring at pure hatred in the form of a pair of impossibly blue eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

"Illogical to the end," I thought, as my teeth chattered in pure terror. "You don't have any teeth to be chattering."

Chatter they did, though, and it seemed like a million years before those blue eyes released my own gray ones, and the hand released my throat just enough to allow me to speak. I still shook violently.

"Etna," I replied to his question through gritted teeth. "I'm Etna."

He tilted his head curiously at me. I knew exactly what his next question was. "What are you?" he asked, and released me entirely.

Ah, the eternal question, and I've no idea how to answer it. I am not a program, but I am not a human. I am an anomaly. I was once, ages ago, a redpill. Some unlikely accident involving my ship, an experimental type of broadcast, a server farm for the Matrix program, and my jacked-in self resulted in what I am today: the consciousness of a human woman, body long gone, existing somewhere in the billions of terrabytes of hard drive space that contains the Matrix. I don't even know the details of the incident that put me here. Most redpills will tell you I am "impossible", and before I became this way, I'd have agreed with them. Now I'm something no one wants to talk about; I cause uncomfortable silences when jacked-in redpills visit the Oracle and I happen to be lounging in the den with Seraph.

I gave Smith the bare bones explanation. He blinked, processed this information, & appeared to dismiss it. He attempted to sit up, and I got my next surprise of the night: he winced, coughed, and fell back onto the couch.

"What did you do to me?" he demanded.

I raised both hands in a gesture of innocence. "Found you in the alley?" I ventured. He bared his teeth at me, and I jumped. "Do I look like someone who could do this to you?" I gestured at the obvious damage.

"No," Smith replied, and I think it was with relief. It might've been a bit embarrassing to have one's ass handed to him by a highly unintimidating anomaly that looked like a 30-year-old woman. I gritted my teeth at the sudden realization that there was emotion in his voice at all. At least plugged-in agents are predictable. Smith was still rogue. My teeth chattered again. "You know who I am," he stated. It was not a question.

"Yes," I said. "I remember everything."

"I remember it, too," he said, and grimaced again. He was obviously in pain.

"I...um...okay," I said. I steeled myself and started again. "I don't know anything about what's going on or why this happened, but if I give you a painkiller will it help?" He glared at me. "I don't know anything about agents, but you look like you could use a painkiller or two. Or twelve." He didn't answer.

Satisfied he wasn't going anywhere, I brought back the bottle of painkillers & some water. "I don't know how it is for you, but even though I know none of it's real, it still feels that way and this helps." Ignoring the dosing prescription on the label, I spilled 6 pills onto my palm. He tried to move to take them when I offered my open hand, but winced again. I bit the inside of my cheek hard to calm down, and perched on the edge of the couch. Before he could fight me off, I'd popped the pills into his mouth and placed the glass at his lips. Shaking, I tipped the glass and managed to get some of it into his mouth. Enough to swallow the painkillers, anyway. He glared again. His blue eyes made me think of blue lightsabers from the ever-so-popular movie series. I wondered if anyone had ever thought "Ooo, pretty" before a blue lightsaber chopped them in half.

"I don't need them," he spat after he'd swallowed them. I was wiping up the water I'd spilled all over him.

"Looks to me like you do," I said, trying in vain to sound stern. "Do you want to sit up?"

He did, so I helped him up to a seated position on the couch, bolstered by a couple of great, fat pillows. I sat across from him in the recliner and stared at him.

"Why am I here?" he asked angrily. I explained about finding him in the alley and dragging his heavy agent butt into my apartment. Left out the part about the Oracle's visit.

"You know who I am," he said again.

"Yes," I said, and rattled off a "definition" of him as though it were a litany. "The would-be annihilator of the human and machine races. You're Smith--former agent of the Matrix, now apparently rogue program who's seen better days."

"Then why are you doing this?"

"Doing what?" I asked. I wasn't dense, but I did want to see how he "saw" this situation. I leaned back in my chair in a failed attempt to look confident.

"You 'rescued' me, as you saw it. You know who I am and you sit in that chair staring at me as though you aren't afraid."

I laughed--a little, high, shrill sound. "Not afraid. Oh, right. Yep, I'm a picture of stoic courage." I walked to the table, picked up my Chinese, and nibbled off a piece of broccoli. Or tried to, until my chopsticks shook so hard I dropped the broccoli. Giving that up, I turned back toward him and regarded him, sitting back in my chair.

"I don't know," I admitted. "I have been in the Matrix for years now, and I have human traits that do not seem to go away. They're weird and they don't make sense in this world, especially given what I know about it, but they remain. And compassion is one of them."

"Your compassion is misplaced," he sneered.

"The object of compassion isn't the point of compassion." Wow. Sometimes I sound like the Oracle.

He laughed shortly & mirthlessly. "You sound like the Or--"

Both of us startled, we stared at each other. And then I started again: he'd laughed, and he was now startled by something he himself had been about to say. This was a ridiculous range of emotion for someone who was a program designed specifically for defense.

"What happened to you?" I asked. I was surprised at my own boldness. "You are not the way you were."

"How would you know the way I was?" he snapped.

"You copied over me when...hell, man, you copied over EVERYONE." I threw my hands in the air. "For a while, when you fought Neo, I WAS you! Everyone was you."

His eyes, beginning to glaze, widened a bit, remembering. Then he looked at me intently. It's very disconcerting for a scientist to suddenly feel like the rat in the maze. His eyes narrowed and he appeared to come to a conclusion.

"You do not stink," he pronounced, and the painkillers got the better of him, to my immense surprise.


	4. Chapter 4

He slept like a log, needless to say. Slept, I say, but as he's a program I suppose he recompiled or rebooted or something very technical like that. Not everyone who gets unplugged from the Matrix is a hacker. Some of us became potentials simply because our brains didn't work like everyone else's, no matter what our field was. Some of us were simply unplugged so very long ago that we came before the time the "hacker test" was in widespread use. I was one of those. I had no idea what a program was doing when he "slept".

Anyway, whatever he was doing left him unconscious to my eyes. I say I keep human habits & tendencies, and usually sleep is one of them. On the other hand, it's not really detrimental to me when I have to go without it, and I couldn't have slept that night if you'd taken a brick to my forehead. I finished removing what was left of his shirt and decided I did not want to explain to this particular program that I'd removed his pants. I wanted to keep my spleen, so he got to keep those. After a little more help from a wet towel, there was nothing left to do but lay him back down and drape a blanket over him. So while I kept an all night vigil, he slept. I watched the clock tick past 10pm, midnight, and onward through the morning hours. I did a lot of thinking and a lot of staring. At some point, Seraph came by with a bundle of stuff from the Oracle. I don't remember what time, and barely registered he'd been there.

He looked so normal. He looked like every businessman you pass on the street. I supposed that was the point. When he'd been created, he was supposed to be an icy, emotionless construct. Even then, it's said he showed more "emotion" than other agent models of the time. When I'd been him there had been an unnatural cyclone of something in his head. Uncontrolled gales of contradictory emotions. I suppose if he was human, you'd have called it a mental imbalance. He was a program, though, so no one knew quite what to call it.

No sign of it now, given our earlier conversation. Confusion yes, but not that horrifying, intense hatred and the terrible determination and the simultaneous longing and fear for everything to just end. I shivered, remembering the longing and fear. Was that all still there? When he woke up, was he going to start all over again? I kept thinking.

He woke up a little after 6am. He yawned. I raised an eyebrow at his startled expression. "I yawned," he told me. This _was_ a question.

"Yes, you did," I said, mystified as he was. "I didn't know what else to do, so I made you breakfast." I pushed a plate of buttered toast & strawberry jam at him. Without a clue what an agent would want to eat, I figured my favorite would do as well as anything.

"I don't ea--" he began, and stared at the plate. To my astonishment and his, he picked up a piece of toast and took a bite. I made the toast, but I hadn't expected him to eat it. He chewed carefully, swallowed, and looked at me. I wondered if his eyes were ever going to stop being so damned unnerving. Right now they looked surprised and curious.

"...well?" I asked, apprehensively. Surprise and curiosity were not part of the maelstrom I remembered.

"It's...pleasant," he said in stunned disbelief. He stared at the toast as though it had insulted him. Then he took another bite.

Smith, would-be Destroyer of Worlds, sat on my couch and ate 6 pieces of toast as fast as I could make them.

As he sat & stared at me, wordlessly asking for answers, I realized I wasn't quite as terrified of him as I had been. He just seemed so human. Ridiculous notion that it was, it gave me a level of comfort, and I had something of an epiphany: was he really so different from me? He was a program who felt emotion because he had been corrupted; I was a "program" who felt emotion because I'd once been human. I sat back down in my chair and laid it out for him.

"All right, Smith. I have no idea what's going on, but it seems to me that maybe, just maybe, I have a little better grasp of this situation than you do." He frowned and opened his mouth, but I plowed on. If I stopped now I might lose my nerve. "It isn't the same situation, but I do have a bit of experience with being dumped unceremoniously into the Matrix, not knowing what's going on. So I am going to treat you as though you're another anomaly, which obviously you are."

He blinked & nodded. I was smugly satisfied, even though I knew he was really still registering astonishment at having eaten. Like a human.

"So do you think you could get up & around enough to change clothes? Yours are in a bad way," I pointed out.

He nodded and looked vaguely surprised to find himself shirtless. "Vaguely surprised" was beginning to seem like his default setting.

I led him into the bathroom & handed him what Seraph had brought by. I stepped into the hallway & closed the door. There were a few rustling sounds, then silence, and then the tap turned on. Then off. Then on again & stayed on. For an unnaturally long time. I shifted from foot to foot, disconcerted, and finally knocked on the door. "Um, Smith?"

The door flew open. He had one hand on the door he'd just opened and the other under the running water of the tap. He was wearing a black t-shirt and a pair of faded jeans, and staring at the hand in the sink as though it might bite him. He certainly wore this just as nicely as his suit; I viciously derailed that train of thought. For the thousandth time that morning, my eyebrows climbed into my hairline. Other than having NO idea what he was doing, the sight of him in regular clothes was...had I really thought last night that he looked "normal"? I found myself wishing the Architect or whoever had created short, balding, stodgy looking agents instead. They'd be less intimidating, but certainly less distracting. Then again, he looked pretty distracted right now, himself. By the tap?

He looked at me as though asking for an explanation. "It feels different."

"What, the water?" I asked.

"Yes," he answered, and wriggled his fingers in the stream. "I could feel it before, but it didn't feel like this." He turned off the tap & plucked at his shirt. "This feels different, too." His eyes were beginning to take on a bit of a wild look.

I stepped forward, grabbing the hand towel off the cabinet & wrapping it around his hands. In this case, I actually knew how he felt. "Yeah, it does. I know."

That brought him up short. "How do you know?" Curiosity now replaced the wild look.

"Happened to me, too," I said. "After...whatever happened, happened...I was here and I knew I was ONLY here. Suddenly everything was different." He actually let me dry his hands, and I replaced the towel on the towel hook. "I wasn't able to see the code before, but I can now. I feel the water & I see the code that makes it." He nodded (_nodded!_) and kept staring at me as though I should keep going. "I guess it's the opposite for you, isn't it?" I looked up at him and he was still nodding, though he was looking through me instead of at me. "Come on," I said, & took him by the hand to haul him back into the living area. Still dazed, he let me.

I sat him at the kitchen table & started doing my dishes. There weren't many, but Smith had started to feel less like a threat & more like a houseguest, and some weird part of me didn't want the dishes in the sink. Inwardly I rolled my eyes at myself.

It was quiet except for the clinking of my dishes & the swish of the water. I didn't like the idea of Smith sitting there, thinking in the quiet. History seemed to show that Smith was dangerous when left on his own to think. "Last night you said something odd," I said, half-glancing over my shoulder. Smith was looking at me so intently it made my mouth go dry. Shaking it off, I continued. "You said I 'didn't stink', before you fell asleep."

"I don't sleep."

"You don't eat either. Except for toast with jam." It just slipped out.

He scowled and made an attempt to look scary and stoic. Somehow it didn't seem the same as it had the night before. He answered me grudgingly. "Humans have a smell; a stink. You don't have it," he said simply.

Well, what do you say to that? "...thanks," I said, drying the last glass.

"It's possibly because you are not human."

I ground my teeth. "Yeah. It could be that."

"Why do you react that way?"

I opened my mouth to make a sharp retort, except I didn't have one. I don't exactly think on my feet very well. Witty repartee remains the domain of Mr. Smith. I thought I'd resort to honesty. "I have had a very long time to try & understand that I'm...code. I comprehend it, but I don't like it."

"What's the purpose of having a preference about something you cannot change?" he asked me. It wasn't malicious; he really did seem to want my answer to the question.

Again, he had me at a loss. I stood there, my back to the sink, staring silently at him. He just sat there, looking back, and let me think. "As I see it, preferences don't have a 'purpose', per se. They simply exist."

"Existence without purpose," he echoed. "I believe that describes me."

"Me, too," I told him, and sat down across from him at the table. I propped my chin in my hands & looked at the most dangerous program in existence. He looked back at me.

"Oh, I'm not sure that's how I'd describe either one of you."

Both Smith and I whirled toward the door to see the smiling Oracle, who was calmly regarding us from the doorway.


	5. Chapter 5

Smith leaped from his chair, looking like he wanted to jump across the kitchen & strangle the Oracle, but she stood perfectly calm, smile never wavering. Watery sunlight filtered through my window, pooling in the floor around her. I wondered, distractedly, if she did that on purpose.

"Etna, dear, where is the package Sati brought yesterday?" I jumped at being addressed, then snatched Sati's Hello Kitty-wrapped package from the countertop and placed it on the kitchen table. "Oh good," said the Oracle. "Any chance of some coffee?"

My mouth worked soundlessly, but that was pretty normal around the Oracle. I began to rummage around the kitchen. In my house there was always a chance of some coffee. That was one human habit I had no intention of giving up.

"Have a seat, dear," the Oracle said to Smith, unwrapping Sati's package to reveal cookies. The Oracle rarely appeared without those cookies. I didn't mind, really; they were very good cookies. As I poured the coffee & brought sugar & cream to the table, Smith was obviously mulling over whether he really did want to "have a seat". Or possibly what he thought about being called "dear". Either was likely to my mind.

He did have a seat, and I sat beside him. I'm not sure why. At this point, he seemed less intimidating than the Oracle. He seemed to be fumbling with his coffee mug. I figured I'd take the same tactic I took with the toast; I put in a couple of sugars and no cream, the way I took my own coffee, then pushed it toward him. He looked at me with something like gratitude, then looked annoyed and scowled at me. Getting used to that particular combination of reactions, I grinned sheepishly & shrugged.

The Oracle was still smiling at us in that maddening way, eating a cookie & stirring her own coffee. Silence ensued, marred only a little by Smith choking on his coffee. He glared at it and added about 5 more sugar cubes. I resisted the urge to ask him if he would like some coffee with his sugar. I turned my attention back to the Oracle, who was still watching us.

"Well?" I asked her. "You obviously know something we don't. Like to share?"

She took a relaxed sip of coffee and looked over the rim of her mug at Smith. "You remember, don't you?" she asked, and he nodded, somewhat grimly. "You were everyone." He nodded again. "And every person you copied onto changed your code just slightly, adding their perceptions & memories into the giant equation that was you."

"But then Neo destroyed him," I pointed out. "Why is he still here?"

"Destroyed? No. Say, rather, that he contained him. Quarantined him back into one, single program, clearing him out of all the other spaces he'd infected."

"Getting him out of us," I mused. "Okay..."

"But getting us out of him wasn't so easy." Smith glared harder, as though he were on the verge of understanding something he didn't want to know. "You were a virus, Smith. You of all programs should know that some data is always changed during the removal of particularly nasty virus." She took another sip of coffee and gave him a look; clearly he was a naughty program who had yet to apologize for becoming said nasty virus. She continued. "Your first encounter with The One changed you. It allowed you to defy your programming and make autonomous decisions. And obviously to feel preferences." Smith seemed to be following so far, even if he didn't see the point in the conversation. He obviously wasn't used to conversing with the Oracle. I'm not sure she ever makes points. "At that time, you were not yet free of your original purpose, because The One still existed within the Matrix. Now, however..."

"Does that mean Neo is dead?" I asked her.

"Not necessarily, Etna," and she smiled enigmatically. "It just means that wherever he is, he is not inside the Matrix itself. And due to the bargain he made with the machines, he's not necessary anymore." She turned again to Smith. "Which means you are free of that purpose."

"Ergo, I am without purpose."

"Oh, no, Smith. Every line of code in this Matrix has a purpose, whether you know it or not." I couldn't help it. I chuckled bitterly. "Even you, Etna. It's my purpose to know these things." Again she regarded Smith.

"So it looks like you've got a choice, Mr. Smith. You can choose to adjust and exist here, and thus find your purpose, or you can choose to grace us with another of your spectacular instabilities." She sipped her coffee and sighed in satisfaction, as if she hadn't just been talking about Smith's attempt at destroying the known world.

Smith processed that information very quickly. I'd have felt like I'd been hit by a log truck. I know; I've been there. "I made the second choice previously. It did not seem to bring any benefit. I suppose I shall attempt the first," he said, almost laconically. There was that signature smirk I'd been expecting at any moment. I flinched involuntarily.

"Good!" the Oracle said, as though that settled & explained everything. "So I suggest you remain here with Etna."

"What's she got to do with this?" he snarled at the same time I yelped "Why me!"

"She is the only entity in the Matrix who has been through a semblance of what's happening to you. You could not have asked for a better guide." She dusted her hands off & finished her coffee. "I'd best be going. I don't want Sati & Seraph to burn the place down while I'm gone. A wonderful program, but the man can't cook." She leaned over to kiss my cheek, the way she always did. But she whispered to me. In "that voice". The bottom dropped out of my stomach.

"Leaving him with you will produce one of two ends, Etna. A lasting, prosperous peace for human and machine, or the destruction of everything as we know it. I believe that the opportunity of the former outweighs the risk of the latter." She patted my cheek & moved toward the door.

"But how..who...what do I do with him now?" I hissed at her, in a bit of panic.

"I'm sure you'll think of something, dear." The door closed.

I turned to the dangerously unstable program sitting at my kitchen table. He was sitting with his chin propped in his hands--a mirror image of what I'd been doing before. There was that eyebrow again. He was telling me the next move was mine. "Well, start guiding," the blue eyes said wordlessly. Great. What I needed at this moment, other than a very strong drink, was time to think.

"Do you watch movies?" I asked.


	6. Chapter 6

After living alone for a very long time, one of my favorite hobbies was downloading movies. Hey. I had NO problem "sticking it to the man" in this particular fashion. In the light of what I knew about the Matrix, pirated movies kinda paled in importance. I had quite the collection; my own lame attempt at biting my thumb at "the establishment".

Now I felt like I was in a bad, cliché movie. "So Smith has to find the purpose of his life," I thought. "Here's this program trying to adjust to a bit of newfound 'humanity', and I'm making him watch movies?" I consoled myself by saying it was just distraction, and besides, what would make me think I could teach him anything better than movies could?

If I was going for distraction though, I figured I'd pull out all the stops and go for the multi-part epics. I started with the Lord of the Rings trilogy and found that Smith was rather engaged by it. Again I found myself studying him.

He seemed incredibly uncomfortable in his own skin, at first. He sat perched on my red futon sofa, scowling at the television set as though I were forcing him to do this. Over the course of an hour or so, however, he began to relax. He settled back into the couch and shifted around, making himself comfortable. He seemed as though he might be...enjoying himself? I thought I'd push my luck. I disappeared for a moment & came back from the kitchen with 2 sodas & a bowl of popcorn. I put the popcorn in his lap & handed him a soda, then plopped down on the couch right beside him, a little startled at my own audacity. Apparently he already knew how to use a remote control, because he paused the movie. He had been interested enough to actually pause it; that didn't escape my notice. I wondered if plugged-in Agents went to the movies. I had a sudden urge to laugh hysterically, thinking of Smith, Jones, & Brown sitting in a movie theater, sunglasses & all. I refrained.

"What is that for?" he said, eyeing the popcorn, then looking at me.

"Popcorn," I said, and took a particularly buttery piece. I popped it into my mouth, and then explained "It's a thing you eat when you watch movies."

"Why?"

"Oh, I don't know, it's just a tradition or--"

"No. Why should you eat at all?"

"Ah," I said, comprehension dawning. "I suppose that doesn't make a lot of sense." I curled both legs under me in the yoga-like pose I usually adopted for the couch. "I was human once. As a human, I had to eat. I'm sure you get that." He nodded & grimaced. "Well, we've also got these senses. Taste, touch, smell, all that. I know you've got them, too, but in us, they're strong and insistent. And they're our interface for processing information about our surroundings. All information, including some that's extraneous. Some things aren't necessarily needed for survival, but they're pleasant to the senses." I ate another handful of popcorn. "So even though I know I don't need it, I still do some things because they're pleasing. Like popcorn." I took a drink. "Also soda. And perfume and Chinese food and brushing my teeth and going barefoot in grass and...you get the picture." He didn't seem to. I sighed. "Because I like those things, and I choose to do them for their own sake."

"Hmm." Smith made a noncommittal sound & took a piece of popcorn. He turned it all around, staring at it. "I had senses before, but they weren't like this. They were merely information to be processed & reacted to; no inherent value or subjective content." Ah, so he had gotten that first part. "This 'pleasing' part is foreign to me." He was obviously weighing a decision. I had never seen someone so actively absorbed in the decision to eat popcorn. Finally he put the kernel gingerly in his mouth. Evidently he liked it, because he ate two more in rapid succession. Then he took a drink of soda & looked curious. "The popcorn made me want to drink the soda."

"Yeah, I think I've figured out that's a 'rule'," I told him. He looked askance at me. "The Matrix is made to follow rules closely modeled on that of the human world it's patterned after. You can bend the rules because you were created to, and I can bend them because I understand the concept and I've had a lot of time to learn how. Maybe some of it's because I'm code, too. But we can't break them, and I'm convinced some of the most mundane things in life are really just arbitrary rules. Like the fact that popcorn always makes you thirsty and your toast will always land butter-side down if you drop it. Less important versions of things like aerodynamics & gravity, but rules just the same." Rules, he seemed okay with. He nodded & I took the remote to play the film.

Weeks passed. We watched movies a lot. He asked questions about everything, including a lot I didn't have answers for. We spent a lot of time sitting on the couch completely ignoring whatever film was on, while I explained things like why I preferred to eat my unnecessary noodles with chopsticks instead of a fork. In between, I took him places. We went to the grocery store, the park, out on walks in the street. He seemed to enjoy the park; he said he liked the way the air moved. He didn't like squirrels, but he did like to watch birds. I took him shopping, which he professed to despise, but that failed to explain why he always wanted to go with me when I went. "I get bored when you're out and I'm here by myself," he claimed. That might've been true; he did seem to want to go anywhere I went. It was like having a dangerous, possibly sociopathic shadow. He did start showing preference for colors, though. He liked to wear blue and red, and wanted me to wear blue and green. I thought it was peculiar when he began to show a color preference for me at all. Not many people care what color the cover is on their encyclopedia. But I bought a bright green blazer anyway.

I even took him to the theater a few times, and had to sit stifling a laugh the entire time. He didn't wear the sunglasses, of course, but that didn't make my mental image of "Agent Movie Night" go away. He liked movies better at the apartment, though; he said the couch was more comfortable than movie chairs. Good thing he liked the couch, as he'd been sleeping on it now for quite some time.

The movies had worked wonders for bringing up subjects he wanted to ask about. His curiosity was completely endless, and he wanted to know everything about everything. Emotion was the most complex thing. He hadn't been designed as an intuitive program like the Oracle, so becoming one (if that indeed is what had happened) had added an entire new facet of existence. Disappointment, attachment, grief, frustration, contentment, anger. He knew the textbook definition of all of these, but it always seemed to catch him off balance when he felt one. The anger showed through often. It had been his first and most powerful emotion, and it surfaced at odd times. It was often his first reaction at failing to understand something. I'm sure a lot of it had to do with me. I was to "guide him," the Oracle said, but I was pretty ill-adjusted myself, and it was frustrating to him when I couldn't explain things in terms he understood.

There were days when I found myself staring him in the face, both of us yelling at the tops of our lungs, wondering if it was about to degenerate into the physical battle I was always expecting. I thought after so many years of learning to bend the Matrix rules, I might be able to go toe-to-toe with an agent. On several occasions, I thought I might have to. On the days he was particularly difficult, I really wanted to. It never managed to come to that, and the longer we lived together, the less it happened.

We came home from the grocery store one afternoon, and I decided I was going to show him the pinnacle of his favorite movie genre. "Okay, Star Wars now!" I said, clicking the remote. We'd gotten a lot more familiar by this point, and often our movie-watching position involved one of us lounging on the couch, their feet in the other's lap. This afternoon it was my turn to take up all the space. He alternated between confusion about & fascination with my flawlessly groomed, immaculately painted toenails. "Aesthetics, Smith," I explained patiently. I didn't worry a lot about my hair or my clothes, but I really couldn't stand going without a pedicure.

"I see nothing wrong with the aesthetics of your toes that should require painting them." He was becoming quite opinionated on what he did and didn't find "pleasing to the senses," but some things were still very strange to hear in that Agent Smith voice. His hands on my bare feet, where he'd laid them, were intensely distracting.

"Thanks, Smith. I think."

I think it's possible he enjoyed Star Wars more than the previous movies. I pointedly avoided looking at him any time there was a blue lightsaber on screen, trying to forget what I'd thought about his eyes. I hoped he couldn't read minds. We made it all the way to the end of "Return of the Jedi". When Leia revealed to Han that Luke was her brother, prompting Han to kiss her, Smith turned suddenly to look at me.

"Why do people do that so often?" he asked, as though he'd been pondering this for quite some time.

I had no idea where this conversation was going to go, but what else could I do? "What, kiss? It's a show of affection,"I stated simply, hoping that would settle it, and that I wasn't going to have to explain other displays of affection to a program of questionable mental stability.

"I see that, but why is putting your mouth on someone a sign of affection? Who decides that?" He seemed genuinely confused, but maybe a little amused at more evidence of humanity's weirdness.

I thought for a moment, and came to the conclusion that it was, well, kinda weird. Who did decide that, anyway? "Good question, Smith." I shrugged. "I don't know who declared that's the way it would be, but it's accepted by most people. Like I said, mostly to express an attachment to someone." As an afterthought, I added, "Also, it is very physically pleasant, so that's probably another reason." He nodded, seemed mollified, and went back to watching the film, still looking thoughtful.

Seconds later, entirely without warning, his hand was on the side of my neck, cupping the back of my head in his hand, and his face was no more than an inch from mine. Curse his programming; he still had all the speed & strength of an agent. He'd shifted and pulled me, and I was practically in his lap. Those inhumanly blue eyes were staring right into mine and I could not look away, though I was desperately trying. All the old instincts screamed to life: "Too close! Too close!", but I couldn't move a muscle. I couldn't even protest verbally; I did manage to squeak. Then without releasing my eyes, he laid his lips very softly on mine.

Not at all what I expected, though looking back, I don't know what I was expecting. How could I, if I hadn't been expecting the kiss at all? His lips were damnably soft and slightly cold and he smelled like the soda he was drinking and he was still looking straight into my eyes, even this close. The blue was only more gorgeous at this distance. In complete shock, I gasped, opening my lips slightly. Apparently he liked that, because he opened his mouth slightly, too, and leaned harder into the kiss. For someone who had no idea what he was doing, he caught on abominably quick. He was good, and I groaned quietly as I gave up. Closing my eyes, I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed back using every nice trick I knew, beginning with running my tongue along his lower lip. I was smugly satisfied when he gasped slightly and his other hand tightened on my back.

By the time we paid attention to anything else, the credits were finishing and we were both gasping for air we didn't really need. Face still inches from mine, he asked "Why does it do that? Make one breathe harder?"

"Don't know," I said, reaching up for another kiss, which he returned enthusiastically. "Excitement, I guess."

He made that maddening noncommittal sound I had grown so used to over the last month or so, and he was back again, soft lips all over mine & hands caressing my back. I ran my fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. After a few more moments, I gasped again and pushed him back slightly. "Wait, wait, wait." He stopped & looked at me quizzically. "Why are you doing this?"

He got the smirk again. "You said it was to show affection."

My eyebrows shot up as my heart jumped into my throat. "Yes," I said slowly. "It is. You meant to show me affection?"

"Yes," he said simply. "It seemed only a matter of time that I'd become attached to you. It turned out you were correct, and the kiss was very physically pleasant. So I didn't stop." He seemed to think this was a perfectly adequate explanation. "Do you find it enjoyable?"

Oh, the tables were turned! Now he was questioning me. "Yes..." I spoke slowly again.

He leaned closer. "Do you have affection for me?"

"I...well, yes." I was so startled at this realization that I didn't even have the grace to blush.

His lips were close enough now that they were brushing mine again. "Then why stop?"

Well. The speed and strength **and** logic of an agent. I really had nothing to say to this. So I answered with a disbelieving half-laugh and captured his mouth with my own again. He made a very enthusiastic sound and proceeded to keep me on the couch for a very long time.


	7. Chapter 7

I went to bed very, very late that night, finally putting my foot down on Smith's protestations that I should stay on the couch with him. I found my ability to blush again the next morning. Smith asked me over coffee why my face kept turning red. I stammered the beginnings of a reply when I looked up to find him smirking at me. He knew exactly why.

Great. Now I had my very own agent with a sense of humor. I threw a piece of toast at him.

The week flew past. Our days continued much the same as they always had. While our evenings still started out on the couch with a movie, they now always ended on the couch with both of us entirely breathless, our clothes in a state of disarray, and Smith logically protesting that I didn't really _need_ sleep, so I should just stay with him. I admit that, on a couple of occasions, I let him talk me into staying on the couch the whole night; he congratulated himself on winning me over with his flawless logic. Strange as it was to be thinking it about an agent, I had to admit to myself that in the 60 years I'd been trapped in the Matrix, I had never been this happy.

Saturday rolled around. I'd planned on going to the Oracle that morning, and Smith wanted to go with me. Having been in the Matrix for years since my "incident", I'd become well acquainted with the Oracle & Seraph among others. I knew the Merovingian and Persephone and most of the Exiles, though I made some of them uncomfortable; they were representations of humanity, while I had once been the real thing. The Oracle never seemed to mind, and she felt more like a real grandmother to me than anyone ever had in the Real. Sati never had to get used to me. The Oracle picked her protegés well.

Sati never had to get used to Smith, either. She'd gone with us to the park on occasion, happily holding Smith's hand and reminding him to look both ways before crossing the street. She had even "made the sky pretty" for us a few times, having extracted the promise from Smith that "he'd be good" from now on. When Smith wanted to come with me, I knew it wasn't the Oracle he wanted to visit. He wanted to visit Sati. I never would've guessed he'd develop such an attachment to the child-program.

I went into the bathroom to fix my hair. I suppose I should've been able to do it by thinking. Residual self-image and all. As a near-program, I could do small things about my appearance, like my toenail polish, but some things were thus far beyond me. I pulled my hair to each side & braided it, finishing it off with colored elastic bands. As he usually did, Smith watched me. "It's the same color as copper wire," he informed me.

"My hair?"

"Yes. I noticed it on Thursday when we were installing the speakers," referring to yet another one of my unnecessary technological purchases, which he'd helped me set up. He leaned over impulsively and put his nose to my hair. "I like the way it smells, too."

His breath on my neck nearly sent me through the roof. That was one of the tricks he'd discovered in our evenings on the couch, and he delighted in teasing me with it at random times. I gave my best glare, which was no match for that smirk he was giving me again. I made sure to step on his foot on the way out of the bathroom. I caught a glimpse of him changing his shirt from the corner of my eye and fled into the kitchen before I did something I'd regret.

Soon as he joined me, we left. I couldn't help but smile at him; he'd put on my favorite one: a red button-front shirt. He'd rolled the sleeves up. In a good mood, I put on his favorite, too: the green corduroy blazer that stopped just short of my knees. He gave me a knowing smile, just short of the smirk, and brushed his lips against mine, looking at me intently.

"Why do you do that?" I asked.

"Do what?" he asked.

"Look at me like that when we kiss?"

"I like looking at you." I arched an eyebrow. "And it seems to throw you off balance. I like you with your guard down." I opened my mouth, but couldn't think of a thing to say to that. "Like now," he said over his shoulder as he went out the door.

I brought a cake; it's only polite, as the Oracle passes out cookies left and right. It was from a bakery, as I wasn't much of a cook, but it was gorgeous and it had strawberries, Sati's favorite. As I took it into the sunlit kitchen to put it on the table, Smith sat on the couch in the living room talking to Sati, watching the kids bend spoons & float teacups.

"Good morning, Etna," the Oracle told me, kissing me on the cheek. "And how is he?"

"He's fine, _nonna_. In the living room with Sati." I didn't feel right calling her Oracle all the time, so I'd given her the nickname after my incident.

"And how is he adjusting?"

I blushed very slightly, remembering the nights on the couch. When I looked up from where I was seated at the table, I found the Oracle with a huge smile, arms crossed. "You...you _know_!" I gasped, blushing harder at the realization. It was like my grandmother finding out I'd made out all week on the couch like some teenager! With an agent, no less!

"I know what? That eventually it was bound to happen? It was only natural, Etna. He's always had the capability to feel." She turned to pour some tea into a delicate sea green cup. "I suspect it of all agents, really. Their AI is much too complex to stay that unattached..."

"You told me the day after he arrived that something would happen because you left him with me." There was an implied question.

"Yes," she told me. "The time is coming when he will have to make a choice, and the decision he makes will rest largely on his experiences with you. Whether they outweigh the experiences he had before."

I was taken aback. "You mean to tell me that my taking him to the park and feeding him ice cream and watching movies and kissing him on my couch is supposed to keep him from...from what!" I stood up, feeling like she'd hit me with a hammer. I dropped into a whisper. "From becoming again what he was before?" My voice was panicky, I knew.

"What keeps you from losing your mind, Etna?" she asked me, crossing her arms. How could she stay so calm? "When you've lived years beyond half the people you know from Outside, what keeps you sane?"

I blinked while I thought about this. "My attachments here, I suppose," I said carefully. "My attachments to you and Seraph and the kids..."

"Then are you saying that your emotions, in the form of your affection for us, keep you from becoming something you might otherwise be?" She took my hand. "Program or human, child, your affection for us is real. Why shouldn't his be?"

"But he's...he's...an AGENT," I protested lamely, knowing that meant nothing. Given such high level AI, there was no one who could say what he was capable or incapable of learning, including emotional attachment. His own frustration at that reality was proof enough. As if I needed proof after the way he acted this entire week. He was always truly disappointed when I decided to go to bed, and I didn't believe it was only because he liked kissing. He really hadn't wanted me to leave. The Oracle must've thought my protest was as lame as it sounded. She rolled her eyes at me.

There was a commotion from the living room as the doorbell rang and one of the kids answered it. It was obvious someone had come to see the Oracle. I was heading toward the kitchen door when the yelling began.

"You!" I recognized the voice of Ghost, a redpill I knew vaguely. It was only then that I realized they would recognize Smith sitting on the couch. I vaulted from the kitchen door into the den, stopping squarely in front of the sofa, and whirled to face the door. Instead of the door, I stared down the barrels of several handguns. One tall bald man with both ears hung thick with earrings and two women: a solid, redheaded black woman who looked almost bored and a tiny Asian girl with a superior sneer.

My instinctive action caused quite a few surprised blinks from the redpills, but none lowered a weapon. "You don't understand the situation," I said calmly.

"I am not sure much needs explaining, Etna. There's a Smith behind you."

"I know, Ghost. I brought him here."

That brought an indignant outburst of creative curses from the pierced man.

"So, what? You're a program now?" he spat. "Are you working with them?"

"Oh, as though you people have ever treated me any differently from one anyway." I knocked Ghost's gun away from my face. "Who is 'them', anyway? Aren't we all on the same side now?"

"Like hell," said the girl.

"Shut it, Haruka." Ghost hadn't raised his weapon again; I took it as a good sign.

"Look, Ghost," I said. "The Oracle is a program. Sati is a program. You going to gun them down, too?"

"They're not agents," said the redhead dispassionately.

"Neither is he," I snapped. "You see a suit or an earpiece or a gun?"

"I see a gun," she pointed out rationally.

I turned my head just enough to see Smith's hand holding my own Browning 9mm over my right shoulder, aiming squarely at Ghost's forehead. Carrying it was a nervous habit from the days when I was still on the run from agents. I never expected to see it used in this room. "Smith..." I half-asked, half-warned.

"I would appreciate it if you would tell your men to stop pointing those at her," he told Ghost crisply. Hearing his voice take on the "agent tone" froze my blood.

"Fuck you," said the pierced man.

"Lucius..." Ghost hissed warningly.

The Oracle saved us all the trouble of killing each other in her living room. "I'd rather you all just sat down and had cookies," she told us from the kitchen, leaning against the doorframe. She looked supremely unworried.

Almost as if they were embarrassed, the redpills dropped their weapons immediately to their sides, and Smith tucked my gun into the back of his waistband, albeit grudgingly. I took it back out & put it back where it had been, in the back of my own jeans. I looked at him flatly.

"So why are you here?" I asked Ghost.

"Just delivering news," he said. "Phaedra died last night."

"Oh gods," I thought. "Not Phaedra." Oh, Phaedra. Phaedra had been unplugged by the same ship and the same crew as I. Only days apart and near the same age, we'd grown as close as sisters. We lived together in Zion and taken positions on the same ships until my incident. Even after that, she'd jacked-in sometimes just to talk to me. She always volunteered for runs when I was the informant. She'd stopped jacking-in years ago, too old to crew a ship. She still sent me messages every time a ship headed out with a Matrix-bound crew. She was on the Council, now. Or had been.

I sat down hard on the edge of the couch. Lucius glared at me. "What do you care?" Ghost grabbed his arm, but I was inches from Lucius' tattooed face in a flash. I flew into a rare fury.

"What do I care? How about that Phaedra had only been out for days when the same ship unplugged me? How about that we served on the same ships until that freak accident landed me here? She was a sister to me, you little--"

"He didn't know, Etna," Ghost said apologetically. "He doesn't know anything about you."

"Yeah," I replied bitterly. I could feel the tears welling up. Ah, Phaedra. I dropped Lucius' collar. "I suppose I'm not exactly textbook material in Zion. I'm the leper they'd rather forget, right?" None of the crew members said anything. "Right. I'm leaving. You coming with me, Smith?"

He was behind me now, and answered by touching my arm silently. We left as I always left a group of redpills, an awkward silence in my wake.

On the street, I broke down. I sat on the nearest bench and sobbed, elbows on my knees and my face in my hands. With every death of every old friend Outside, I understood again why immortality wasn't all it was cracked up to be. After a few minutes, I realized Smith was watching me quietly. I sighed, face still in my hands. I didn't raise my head.

"I'm sorry, Smith. It's just hard for me every time I hear about one. There were people I loved Outside."

He seemed to be at a loss, then suddenly understood. "Grief." I nodded silently. "And when I feel something because you feel it, that's empathy."

I looked at him, a little surprised. My eyes were stinging. "Wow, Smith. I...I haven't been giving you enough credit." I smiled through my tears. "You're getting really good at this 'rogue agent program with illogical feelings' thing. Better than I am, I'm afraid." His lips quirked in a half-smile. I laid my face against his shoulder, still wondering a little that only weeks ago, his very presence scared me witless. I felt his breath in my hair as he laid his face against the top of my head and ran his fingers along the braid behind my ear. He started to say something, but before he could get the words out, we were interrupted.

"Crying on the machine's shoulder," Lucius sneered. He, Ghost, and the other crew members had come out of the building. I snapped. I roared over the back of the bench and grabbed Lucius by the lapels.

"Stick to your own business, bitch. It's less dangerous," I whispered into his face. I was provoking him and I knew it. I was looking for a fight, I guess. Stupid, but I was angry and frustrated and grieving. I got my fight. Lucius broke my grip and punched me in the jaw. As if from a distance, I heard Ghost yelling at Lucius to stop and felt, rather than saw, Smith leap over the bench. I laughed darkly, and then I punched Lucius squarely in the sternum.

He couldn't have been expecting the force. They don't talk about me much in Zion or on the ships. Like I said, I'm an uncomfortable topic. That's why no redpill is ever quite prepared to realize that I am no less formidable than an agent. I was a redpill myself once, but it had been a very long time since I found myself trapped here, and I'd had time to learn much more than they ever would. The list of redpills that could've taken me in the Matrix was short. And this Lucius was not on it.

His head rebounded off a lamp post about 2 yards back from where I'd hit him. I followed faster than he could gather himself. Knee to the groin, elbow to the side of the head. He punched me hard in the kidney, and I hit the pavement. I bounced up boots first and took him under the chin with a jabbing kick, unbalancing him. That allowed me to pick him up bodily by the throat and throw him into the stoop of the building closest to us. He stayed down. Rock chips & dust were still falling from the impact as I crouched down beside him and whispered. The words stuck in my throat, raspy from sobbing, but they sounded loud in the silent street.

"I've lived here for 60 years, brat. I was stuck in here before the order came down to grow your sorry little carcass in the fields. I have been here more time than your entire crew has jacked in--combined. Almost 90 years old--can you even wrap your feeble mind around that? The people I loved have lived their lives and had their families and are dying their deaths while I am trapped here, like this. There is no red pill for me anymore. And you ask me why I care that Phaedra is dead? What do _you_ care where I find my comfort?" I choked and my voice broke. I stood and delivered a kick to his ribs that sent him to the other side of the stairs. "Stick to your own business. It's. Less. Dangerous." I turned on my heel, and started to walk back to where the others were standing. Ghost looked embarrassed, Haruka looked terrified, and the redhead looked impressed. I ground my teeth as I walked past them, aware of Smith looking at me in a very calculating way.

Ghost stopped me with a hand on my arm. "I'm sorry, Etna. For what it's worth, I know you & the Councillor were friends. And..." he looked me in the eye, for a wonder. "Well, I'm sorry."

"Take him home, Ghost. He's okay." I smiled wanly. "And run him through the agent training program again." Ghost nodded.

I fell silently in beside Smith, who was already walking in the direction of home.

------------------

Author's Note: Etna's nickname for the Oracle, _nonna_, is Italian for grandmother. Etna is not Italian, but being named after an Italian volcano, it seemed to go with the theme.

Also, wanted to reiterate: Etna's hand-to-hand prowess isn't the result of only her training programs back in the day, or from some inherent awesomeness. She's been a very long time in the Matrix, and has had much longer to figure out how to bend the rules of physics. As a scientist, it stands to reason she'd learn as much as she could out of simple curiosity.


	8. Chapter 8

We walked home in silence. I didn't notice when he took my hand, but at some point I realized he'd laced his fingers through mine. I looked up at him.

"Just feels right," he said simply. I had to agree. It did. "So," he said after a pause. "That was...impressive. It seems I'm not the only dangerous Exile living in our apartment."

"I...no." I don't think I even noticed that he said "our apartment" at the time. "Living here for 60 years, you learn a bit. The new recruits are always surprised to learn that, for some reason."

Smith said nothing, but squeezed my fingers ever-so-slightly.

Back in the apartment I turned on the stereo & sat on the couch. Like any good human, I have my moments, and I was having one now, complete with sad music. I felt like an idiot for it, but in other ways I just didn't care. Absently, I thought the new speakers sounded very good, and was glad I'd let Smith set them up. He was better at that sort of thing than I was. He was better at a lot of things, now. One sad thought led to another in that spiral of depression to which humans are so susceptible.

How had the Oracle thought Smith was supposed to learn anything from me? Smith was already miles away from what he'd been before, and look at me. I'd been stuck in the Matrix for almost 60 years, and nothing to show for it but an extremely messy apartment, a huge repertoire of physics-defying skills that weren't even necessary anymore, and friends Outside that died by the dozen while I stood and watched, as if I were trapped behind a glass wall. What was there I could do to change any of it? I felt worthless and completely and utterly alone. "And she tells me that I'm supposed to help him?" I thought. "Fine job I've done with me." I put the palms of my hands against my eyes.

Smith stood propped in the doorway to the kitchen, leaning against the jamb. He watched me & listened to the music for...I didn't know how long before he came to sit beside me.

"I've been standing there for 37 minutes processing this," he told me. "And I cannot come up with a phrase I think would comfort you."

"Sometimes there are situations in which people can't be consoled with words," I told him. It was so hard to be explaining anything to him when I felt this way. "Grief is usually like that."

"You will not grow old and die like your peers."

My face contorted and I choked on a sob. I must have looked like a train wreck. "No. Humans are meant to be finite. We're supposed to grow old and die." I looked at my hands, gorgeous & pale & completely free of wrinkles, even though I was almost 90 years old by human standards. "I don't even age."

He didn't say anything for a moment. "I will never grow old and die either, Etna." It was the first time he'd used my name, and it startled me into looking at him. His eyes held mine intently; there was a depth of emotion in the blue that I'd never seen before now. "If you form an attachment to me, you won't have to grieve over my death."

I had told him it wouldn't be possible to comfort me with words, but I suppose I had lied. I stared at him in shock. The horrible tightness in my throat eased slightly. Program or no, Smith cared. Smith, this program who'd once tried to annihilate everything, didn't like that I was upset, and he was looking, in his own way, for a way to make it stop. I don't know when he'd ceased to be what he was before, or if he just developed new layers around it, but it was that precise moment that I realized it. Fear vanished in the face of an irrational, unexpected, and completely overwhelming trust. I scrubbed at my eyes with my hands again, then leaned toward him, catching him with one arm around each side of his waist and burying my face in his shirt front. He lay backward on the couch & pulled me on top of him. We lay like that for what must've been hours. I cried, off and on. It wasn't all about Phaedra; I cried a lot for 60 very long, very lonely years. All the while, Smith unbraided & stroked my hair, which calmed me immeasurably.

"Smith?"

"Mmm?"

"Has the Oracle told you anything? About why you're here?"

"I am evidently here to prove something," he told me after a pause. "She said it was one of two things, and proceeded to refuse to tell me either one," he said with the air of a martyr. I giggled halfheartedly. "Is she always that vague?"

"Yes," I told him. "Always."

It was very late in the evening by the time I thought about moving. I wriggled a bit further up the couch & kissed him. He returned the kiss gently, almost reverently.

I broke it. "I need to go to bed, Smith."

"All right," he whispered. "Good night." Another near-reverent kiss, this time to my jaw. I shivered.

A young but wise man once said that to deny our own impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human. "Come with me?" I wondered if he even had those impulses.

His eyes widened & he looked at me questioningly, raising that eyebrow. Well, if he didn't have them, he was apparently okay with indulging me in mine. I blushed furiously but nodded anyway. He walked me to my room, where he stopped me and brushed a kiss against my ear.

"Really?" he sounded...anticipating, and his body was all tension. It seemed he did have those impulses.

I reached up and kissed him, starting at his collarbone & working my way up to his jaw. His breath quickened and he pulled me against him. It suddenly became very obvious he knew exactly what I meant, and he wanted it as much as I did. "I'm sure," I whispered, and bit his ear just slightly. He gave a quiet moan and pulled me to himself harder. Our hips ground together; we both gasped at sensations I'd long since abandoned and he'd never bothered to experience. "I am very, very sure." We went inside & shut the door.

Sometime in the night, between gasping for breath & groaning into my hair, Smith whispered he loved me. Somewhere between sighing into his neck and calling his name, I whispered it back.

------------------

_ Author's note: Whew. Huge leap of faith time! I've felt all the way through this story that if a reader still likes it at this point, they'll probably love the rest of the story. I realize I'm changing the Smith character, but that's intentional, and I'm trying to change Etna, as well. That's kind of the concept of the story (the way two people can change each other just by being present), and this is the major turning point for both characters. _

_I really appreciate all my reviewers hugely, as some of you (Lovelace, Sydney, Smithsbabe65, Akenaten--I'm lookin' at you) are very good writers and have been at this longer than I have. Your positive reviews and PMs have had constructive stuff in them that have been really great for shaping the rest of the story, and I appreciate it a lot. _

_Total side note/possible point of interest: the songs in my head during Etna's depressing episode were "The Dreaming Tree" and "The Stone", both from the album "Before These Crowded Streets" by Dave Matthews Band. If you ever feel the need for a good, pouting, non-specific angst moment, lemme tell ya, those are two of the ultimate songs for the job.  
_


	9. Chapter 9

Smith never went back to sleeping on the couch. The apartment had become "ours" a while ago, and now it was "our" bed. He teased me about how many pillows one woman could need to sleep, and insisted I took the covers in the middle of the night, but I teased back.

"Don't think I haven't noticed that's your favorite excuse to get closer," I told him one morning.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he said, pulling me, blankets and all, to his side of the bed.

"Still think only humans can feel something this 'insipid'?" I prodded, propping chin on hand and giving my most impish, mischievous look. We'd come a long way, if I could openly mock him now over things I knew only because he'd said them after he'd copied over me.

"I merely said only humans could've 'come up' with the idea," he said, logic flawless as usual. "And I am fairly certain you and I did not invent the concept, so my statement stands." He arched his eyebrows in that superior agent look. I attempted to smother him with a pillow.

Months passed this way. In all the years I'd been living, disembodied, in the Matrix, I'd forgotten how much "physical" touch could mean. Smith had discovered that physical touch was good for more than causing damage, and that he liked the idea very much. He slept less than I did, never having been human. He'd never developed the habit, and only "slept" long enough to reboot or recompile or whatever it was he did. He was always content to lie with me while I slept. Usually he just watched me, though I did get a number of very, very pleasant wake-up calls.

We still fought every so often. Smith never seemed to lose his taste for intimidating people, though the violent tendencies were curbed. It was a shock for him to realize he'd completely lost his ability to intimidate me, though, and there was a definite adjustment period when it dawned on him. The yelling matches shook the rafters sometimes, and more than once we sent our neighbor, a perpetually startled looking program with a thick Irish accent, running from his own apartment to find a moment's peace. Sometimes our "making up" probably sent Loki running, too. Poor Loki; I always tried to send him a nice apology after those incidents. Usually an apology involving baked goods.

We went to an amusement park once, where I found, much to my amusement, that roller coasters unnerved Smith greatly. I proceeded to insist on riding every single one, just to see the slightly wild look in his eyes grow more fierce after each one. He dearly loved coffee, and drank it with enough sugar to kill a horse. In fact, he seemed to have even more of a sweet tooth than I did, and that was really saying something. It was probably a good thing programs didn't gain weight, or we'd both have had to lay off the ice cream. He liked plants, and in a bit of role reversal from the normal order of things, I usually surprised him with flowers rather than the other way around. He quickly caught on to my favorite guilty pleasure, and I'd find unexpected gifts of expensive, scented bath products. He was a consummate people-watcher, and could sit in the park for hours, with or without me, just watching humans & programs alike.

Encouraged by Smith, I stopped avoiding Exiles. Surprisingly, I found more in common with many than I thought I would. They didn't really seem to see me as all that different. For the first time since becoming trapped in the Matrix, I began to haltingly develop a social life. We even visited Club Hel at times, where Smith delighted in the fact that other programs were still frightened to death of him. The crowd would fall away in sheaves as we passed through it. He wasn't the only Rogue Agent I saw. I know I saw Brown in the club once, agent suit and all, and I'd swear he was willingly on the end of a leash carried by another man in a pair of stunning leather pants. I was simultaneously amused and intrigued to notice the Man in the Leather Pants was none other than Agent Jones. Having developed something of a rapport with Persephone, we had many delightful & entirely inappropriate conversations speculating on that particular subject. Smith was slightly alarmed and annoyed at my interest in Jones' tight leather pants. That is, until I told him I'd like to buy him a pair. Then he was very alarmed.

Redpills had been coming & going to the Oracle's at an astonishing rate since the "Night of Storms" as it came to be called. If my presence caused awkward pauses, Smith's usually caused outright gaping and stares among newer redpills. Ghost's crew had become accustomed to us, however. Ghost greeted me with no less warmth than he gave to the Oracle herself, and even began to carry on lengthy conversations with Smith. Tamar, the redhead I'd impressed with my fight with Lucius, began treating Smith like something of an older brother, herself a younger sister whose sole purpose was to torment him at all opportunities.

Smith certainly didn't look like an agent today. He was dressed in black pants, a pale blue shirt, and a pink & yellow striped apron with Hello Kitty faces along the hem. The apron had been Sati's idea & creation, and he wore it without protest any time she wanted his help in the kitchen. Ghost's crew had arrived one day when he'd been wearing it. No comment from Ghost, who was beginning to take on some of Seraph's serenity, but Tamar laughed so hard she collapsed against the wall. I had to help her stand up. Smith continued taking Sati's cookies out of the oven with the utmost dignity.

I sat on the couch with Ghost. Ghost being more philosophical than most, he figured there was a "reason" for what had happened to me, and had begun to treat me as he treated the Oracle, as well as the other benign programs that co-inhabited the Matrix with the coppertops & bluepills. It was odd, knowing he thought of me as a program, but it was better than being treated as a pariah. Smith & the Oracle were programs, so it wasn't so bad, really, I told myself.

A trend seemed to form in the wake of Ghost's treatment of me, too. More redpills stopped being awkward in my presence, and I even counted some who smiled at me. There was a young girl from a ship called _The Merlin_ who could never seem to stop blushing in my presence. Haruka insisted the girl had a crush on me; I always snuck her an extra cookie before she left. Somehow, that girl seemed to have a different, more startling hair color each time she jacked-in. Tamar began bringing along her "daughter" Tirzah--a girl of no more than 7 years old. She had been an orphaned prodigy when plugged in, and had actually tracked down Morpheus and sent an email explaining she knew all about the Matrix and would like to see the real world and could he come and unplug her please? I recalled the days before this "peace", and wondered that we'd come so far that a 7-year-old could safely crew a ship with her mother, much less be allowed to jack-in to the Matrix. But today here was Tirzah, in the kitchen baking cookies with Sati and Smith. I remembered the days when Smith would've killed Tirzah as soon as look at her. But today here was Smith, helping a couple of 7-year-olds because they weren't allowed to go near the hot oven. I can't imagine that I was the only one who thought all this, but life had begun to feel so...peaceful.

Today Ghost was warning me about the other kind of redpills, though. There were those who believed the machines couldn't be trusted, and would break the agreement eventually. "It's in their programming," the rhetoric went. "They'll never trust us to keep our word, so they won't keep theirs." Flawed logic, and Ghost knew it. It was a small faction, but vocal and growing.

Tamar's laughter was still ringing from the kitchen, and I overheard Tirzah's indignant protests that Smith looked "very nice in his apron."

"Where do you think it's headed?" I asked Ghost.

"I can't tell," he said, and looked uncomfortable. "Etna, they know about Smith."

"Everybody knows about Smith now. Everyone who knows anything, at any rate. Is it...are they planning something?"

"I don't have specific information. Just that it's recently become a talking point, and they aren't happy about his continued existence here in the Matrix. It's contributing to their mistrust of the machines."

"His continued existence," I echoed bitterly. "They don't even know him, Ghost."

"No. But think back to your reaction when you found him. You'll never convince me you weren't terrified when you figured out what you had. Seraph told me about the phone call."

I lobbed a piece of cinnamon candy at Seraph's arm. Not a very satisfying form of revenge, as he simply caught it, unwrapped it, and put it in his mouth. I rolled my eyes.

"They're all just as scared now as you were that night. You may be the only human alive who wouldn't have killed him on sight, Etna. And you found him. There has to be a a reason for that."

"Apparently it was to give the radical factions something to bitch about," I told him, offering him a piece of candy & eating my own. "And I'm not sure they see me as a 'living human' anyway."

"You're in the lessons now, Etna." I started and almost swallowed my candy whole. "When we teach the children & the new releases, we teach them about you, and what happened. We'll probably never be sure what caused the incident, but you're fast becoming a bit of a folk hero on the Outside." Well. That explained the wide-eyes & blushes & schoolgirl crushes on me.

I blinked back tears. "Thank you, Ghost."

"It's actually Tamar you can thank." I blinked, and he continued. "It started that day when you...confronted Lucius and told your story." Ha. "Confronted" was a nice word for what I'd done to Lucius. I winced. Lucius was one of the radicals now, and had transferred off Ghost's crew.

"I lost my temper that day. Shouldn't have done that," I said.

"No harm done," Ghost said, palms up. "And you impressed Tamar. She got all the information she could on your situation & began to tell your story. She seems to feel you sacrificed your life for the cause, and wants to make sure your efforts in the intervening years don't go unnoticed." He seemed pleased about that, and I was flattered. His voice took on the warning tone again. "There are the radicals though. You make them uncomfortable. You're a gray area, and they don't know what to make of you. With people like this," he said, turning up his hands, "they fear what they can't understand." I nodded gravely. So Smith was not the only point of contention.

Smith came from the kitchen, removing his apron. A giggle followed him from the kitchen, and he cast a glare back in at Tamar. Where once a glare from Smith would've frozen anyone in her tracks, this only netted another giggle, with good-natured laughter from the Oracle thrown in.

"Thanks for the information, Ghost." I kissed his cheek; I really was picking up a lot of habits from the Oracle these days. "If you'll excuse us, we'd planned on going to the Club to scare lesser programs this evening, and I have to pour myself into a leather corset now." Smith sighed rather blissfully at this statement, and Ghost was snickering as we left.


	10. Chapter 10

I did, in fact, pour myself into that corset, with no small amount of distraction from my resident rogue agent.

"Will you just tie the damn thing?" I pretended to snap at him.

"No," he said, taking full advantage of my bare shoulders. He was standing behind me to cinch and tie off the corset in theory, but in reality he was just kissing my neck & shoulders.

"We're going to be late."

"Hmm," he said from somewhere underneath my hair, sounding highly unconcerned. I rolled my eyes & smiled, shaking my head.

We were late, but it isn't like it mattered. Club Hel is a den of amoral decadence. No one really cares what time you show up, just so long as you're prepared for debauchery when you get there. I had grown to like it, when I was in a certain mood, and tonight I was certainly in that mood. Ghost's news about the radical faction had stuck in my mind. The mention of Smith's "continued existence" grated on my nerves; as though they knew anything about what his existence now entailed. They begrudged him even the simple life he had now: making cookies with Sati & Tirzah, walking in the park, saying "boo" at the odd intimidated Exile, teasing me about my taste in music. They were making assumptions regarding things they knew nothing about. I ground my teeth in frustration.

Persephone waved and smiled at me from the balcony, and we waded through the crowd to take our usual spot with her and the Merovingian. I say "waded" but it isn't as though we were impeded. Smith had long since calculated the best way to "scare lesser programs", as I'd called it, and it involved wearing a dark parody of the agent uniform: black suit & tie, angular sunglasses, tie clip, and a blood red shirt. I usually dressed to match, in red and black. Tonight, however, I was wearing a gift from Smith: the dark bronze leather corset with a floor length red skirt and matching opera gloves. It's not something I'd ever have gotten myself, but I must say there was a sense of power in it. If Smith knew one thing well, it was power, and the best way to display it. The programs scurrying out of our way weren't all gawking at Smith.

Our drinks were waiting on us at the balcony. Persephone greeted me with another smile. Though I had been utterly intimidated by her sheer beauty at first, she was one of the reasons I was glad I took Smith's advice and stopped avoiding Exiles. Whereas most programs came to see me as Smith's property of some sort, and therefore greatly to be feared, Persephone didn't. Being wife to the Merovingian probably gave her a bit of perspective other programs lacked. She'd taught me quite a bit about the inherent abilities of all programs, including how to change things slightly about my own code. One of the "tricks" she'd taught me had allowed me to accomplish the upswept hairstyle I wore tonight. I never could quite get the trick of hairpins, but thanks to her I no longer needed them. Most importantly, she'd become a friend. A real friend--the kind who cares what's going on in your life and lets you know that. I hadn't had one since my incident had driven the wall of the Matrix between Phaedra and me.

Tonight she seemed concerned. "There's talk," she said flatly, handing me my drink.

"Talk about what?" I asked her, hoping she wouldn't say what I knew she would.

"Radical rebels and their...issues...with the Exile community."

I sighed. "Their issues with Smith," I corrected, rolling my eyes.

"Not only that," Persephone said. "My husband has never precisely endeared himself to the redpills. But yes...they're terrified of Smith, it's said. They're beginning to be...vehement. I'm told they've been leaning on a few of the Exiles for information, Etna. Like locations."

"As in, where we _live?_" I asked her incredulously. She nodded. Again, I sighed. "I can see why they're terrified. I can. I was afraid of him, too, when I found him. But people change. Programs change. It's simple common sense, and I can't think of anything he could do to convince them of that!"

Persephone winked. "Take up ballet, perhaps?" The image of Smith in tights came unbidden to my mind.

I giggled in spite of my mood. "Maybe knitting."

"Perhaps leading a troop of Boy Scouts?" Persephone was laughing now, too, and this derailed our serious conversation entirely as we came up with more and more unlikely hobbies Smith could take up to convince the radicals that he had, in fact, changed. I choked on my drink when she suggested "cookie baking".

"Nah, we tried that one, and it hasn't worked."

Persephone's eyes widened and she leaned forward, making certain Smith, Merv, and the Twins couldn't hear her from their nearby seats. "He _baked cookies?_" she whispered hysterically.

"Bakes them regularly. With 7-year-olds," I said. "In a Hello Kitty apron," I added, and sent her into gales of laughter. She had to wipe her eyes, and I had to reassure her several times that I wasn't lying through my teeth.

"Do you have pictures?" she asked giddily, her accent showing slightly now that she was off-guard.

"Pictures of what?" Smith asked, having been mildly distracted by our fits of laughter.

"Nothing!" Persephone and I said in unison, images of perfect innocence. Smith looked unconvinced; not that I blamed him.

"Then if you don't mind my stealing her, I think I would like to dance with my favorite Exile," Smith said, extending his hand to me.

"Not at all," Persephone answered, smiling at me. I giggled, and impulsively leaned over and kissed her, full on the mouth. She started, then sighed.

"I thought you might like a bit of the mood you've put me in this evening," I told her. "Thank you, and now go attack your husband before he starts attacking people with questionably coded chocolate mousse cake." I thought for a moment, then added "Though if you find he has any of that cake, do call me before you dig into it, yes?" She laughed and promised, and I let Smith sweep me out onto the floor to what passed as a slow song in this club. He took one of my hands in his and put his other at my waist. I followed; we'd discovered, ironically enough, that knowing hundreds of martial arts styles had made us both rather graceful dancers. Graceful wasn't what he'd been designed for, and it was certainly not something I'd ever thought of myself. We'd also discovered we both enjoyed it, though, something neither of us had known before. It was part of the reason we kept coming back to the club.

His brow was furrowed. "What did Persephone have to say?" I told him the beginnings of our conversation.

"So basically it was the same thing Ghost said to us at the Oracle's," I concluded. "What did dear old Merv have to say about the situation?" Trinity's mocking nickname for the Merovingian had made its rounds quickly, though I may have been the only person who knew Persephone had encouraged it secretly.

"The same information. The precarious tolerance the redpills have for the machines and Exiles is being tested by my existence here," Smith said. "Some are calling for my deletion."

My hand tightened involuntarily on his arm, and my heart seemed to want to jump out of my chest. I remembered what Persephone had said about the radicals looking for locations. "Smith, they can't--" I started, but he interrupted me.

"Don't start worrying about it now. They won't make a move that drastic; they know that even if I AM an Exile, the machines may take that as a breach of the peace. They won't move until they're certain."

I calmed only slightly, but let him pull me a little closer. "I wish there was some way they could know what I know."

"And what's that?" he asked.

"You're not the same thing you were before. I can't understand how they don't see that, with Ghost and Tamar and Tirzah and me..."

"But I am still code. The same code that caused the deaths of hundreds of their colleagues. And I'm afraid you don't count as 'human' to them anymore, Etna," he said quietly. I sighed, and laid my head against his shoulder.

"No, I suppose that's true." I kept fighting that assessment, but the reality of it was beginning to sink in. It had been easier to accept this inevitable conclusion with Smith there. The Oracle had been right about that; this road was definitely an easier one to walk when you weren't alone in walking it. We danced a while longer until the music changed again, this time into a throbbing techno.

"I am not in the mood to join the mosh pit," Smith told me ironically, as though he ever was in the mood to join a mosh pit. Mentally, I noted I'd have tell Persephone to add that to the list of Potential Smith Hobbies. "Let's go home."

We walked through the park on the way home, completely overdressed for it as we were. But it was quiet, and we were both in a subdued mood after our conversation in the club.

"I have something for you," he said, leading us to a park bench to sit down. "I bought them some time ago, but I didn't...I don't...I'm not sure how this works," he finished, with the tone of someone confessing. He opened his palm and extended it toward me. "I've noticed some people wear them. The Merovingian & Persephone do, and I thought we could, if you wanted to."

I blinked & looked down at the two rings in the palm of his hand. I blinked again and looked up at him, not quite understanding. "It's all right, if you'd rather not. I know you don't wear jewelry, and..." he started to put them away, but I stopped his hand, heart beating in my throat.

"It works like this," I told him, and took the larger of the two rings to put on his hand, shaking slightly. I offered my own, and he placed the smaller one on my finger. I started to laugh self-consciously.

"You're blushing," he pointed out. I could never figure out how he could see that in the darkness of this park. "You're laughing, too. How am I supposed to tell if I did something wrong?" He glared at me in confusion. I laughed harder and threw both arms around his neck, trying to kiss him and laugh at the same time. He stopped glaring and just looked mildly confused. "You don't usually do that when I've done something particularly wrong, so..."

"You didn't do anything wrong," I reassured him, and he relaxed a little, and started to kiss me back. I climbed onto his lap and began to deepen the kiss, hanging onto his tie as I slid my tongue across his lips. He groaned and began to kiss across my jaw & down my neck to my shoulders, as I used both my teeth and tongue to tease his ear. My pulse quickened, and seated on his lap as I was, I could tell his had as well. His hands were beginning to climb my legs beneath my skirt. "On the other hand, you'd better get me home quick before I do something entirely inappropriate for a public park," I growled into his ear.

He got me home in record time, and we set about doing many things that weren't standard park behavior. Several of them were rather loud. I thought I might have to apologize to Loki again. After a very long time, Smith and I were both feeling very content.

"So the rings were a good thing," he determined as we lay in the tangled mess of our sheets, surrounded by clothing tossed into very unlikely locations.

"A very good thing," I confirmed, holding up my hand so my ring caught the light. It was a plain metal circle of brushed steel. Smith held his up beside; they matched perfectly. I took his hand and brought it down with mine to lay against my chest, above my heartbeat. "I refuse to let them have you, Smith."

"I told you, Etna, they aren't likely to--"

"They're calling for your deletion," I said viciously. Something had snapped in me during the night. Maybe when he showed me the rings, maybe when his voice broke as he was calling my name, maybe when I'd collapsed on top of him and he'd wrapped his arms around me so tightly I thought I'd break. "I will not let them. I will not let their blind ignorance ruin our chance at being happy, for once."

"I know," he told me, and kissed the top of my head. "Just, for now don't think about it. We can deal with everything in the morning." There was the firm, crisp agent voice again, but it was tempered by his hand stroking my bare skin from hip to waist to shoulder, lulling me. I nodded & laid my head against his arm, dark thoughts finally giving way to sleep.


	11. Chapter 11

_Author's Note: Thanks so much to everyone who has reviewed and stuck with me this long! Those of you who are here from Livejournal (coughkittyjammiescough) may kill me for this chapter. runs/hides We're not to the end yet, though, so please don't kill me TOO hard._

_------------------------ _

I felt a little better the next morning, and over the next week or so, the redpill threat seemed to fade. There was no new information, and it seemed perhaps they were just content to posture and threaten. Life seemed to go on as usual.

It changed one morning as Smith was over-sugaring his coffee, as usual. Or attempting to. I stood at the cabinet, waiting on the toast and trying to tie my silk robe closed. I yawned and kept a close eye on the toaster; it had been burning things lately. Sometimes I wished I'd been a hacker instead of a vulcanologist; I could've programmed a new toaster instead of going out to buy one.

"Empty again?" Smith complained to the sugar container, and stepped toward the cabinet to get more. I opened my mouth to tease him about talking to inanimate objects when his coffee cup, sitting on the table, exploded where it sat.

"What in the he--" I started to say, but Smith had flown the rest of the distance across the kitchen and pinned me against the cabinets, away from the window.

"Look at the window," he said crisply. I saw it, then. A clean bullet hole in the window, and another in our table, where it had gone through the coffee mug. Where Smith would've been standing if he hadn't moved to get more sugar. I was never teasing about his sugar habit again.

"Gods, Smith, who is--" I started, but was interrupted for the second time, this time by a rain of bullets through the kitchen window. They shattered every inch of the window, shredded my favorite Thai linen drapes, pulverized the kitchen table, then stopped.

"GO," commanded the agent tone, and I didn't question it. We darted from the kitchen into the bedroom, where we started to throw on clothes suitable for...whatever. We didn't have the first clue what we were facing, yet. I threw open the trunk at the end of the bed and started passing him weapons as fast as I could.

"We're going to be running. There's no way we can carry all these."

I sat back on my heels. He was right. I cleared my head. "Fine, then." I handed him two handguns and a belt of clips. "Desert Eagle. You're faster with those than anything else." I strapped two rather vicious daggers to either side of my waist. I looked down at myself; it felt like a long time since I'd worn this getup. I'd instinctively thrown on the worn brown leather I'd always worn when protecting redpill couriers during the War.

"Knife to a gunfight, Etna?" Smith quipped at me, pointing at the daggers.

"Ha," I said, not laughing. "If I've learned anything from 60 years in this place, it's that we always run out of bullets at some point, and damn it, I want sharp objects when that happens." I was damned good with them, too. They somehow felt more natural to to me than a firearm. "They're versatile," I explained, tucking a Browning into a shoulder holster on each side. "Where are we going?"

"Ghost's crew is at the Oracle's today. First thing to do is warn them that this is happening," Smith said. All efficiency. I'd always wondered what it would be like to run with an agent, rather than away from one. Looked like I was about to find out.

We took the stairs to the roof. Stealthier, or at least slightly smaller, than Smith, I checked the surrounding rooftops from our vantage point. Once I'd cleared it, we took off, leaping from roof to roof until we reached the Oracle's building. I was afraid he would have to slacken his pace to allow me to keep up, but if he did, he didn't let me know it. We dodged into the roof access door.

"Do you think they're on us?" I asked him.

He nodded. "There are 12 of them, three buildings behind." They'd sent 12 people to assassinate one agent program and a human program anomaly. I ground my teeth. I wouldn't let them have him if they'd brought an army. Seemed they weren't as fast as we were; not a surprise. We headed for the Oracle's apartment as fast as we could move, knocking several people and a hallway plant over very rudely. I wondered if one was expected to apologize for that sort of thing while running for her life.

We made it to the Oracle's apartment and burst in through the door to find the Tamar, Haruka, and Ghost in the living room with the Oracle. It looked as though they were there so Haruka could speak with the Oracle; the two were absorbed in a spirited conversation. Sati & Tirzah sat on the floor, playing with a Strawberry Shortcake tea set. Ghost and Tamar leaped to their feet instantly. I started to babble.

"Etna," Smith said sharply, cutting me off. I bit the inside of my cheek and glared at him, but he was right. I shut up and let him. His eyes sent me a "thank you". "I believe the radicals have made their move." He told them about the failed sniper and the dash across the rooftops in much fewer words than I would have.

"Shit," Haruka said, and produced two handguns from somewhere. Where she kept them in outfits that consisted mostly of t-shirts & pleated skirts, I'll never know.

"Close the blinds," Ghost ordered, and I ran to comply. "Tamar, take the girls & the Oracle into the bedroom and make sure no one can see in through the window." Tamar snatched the girls and the Oracle followed them into the bedroom.

Haruka, Ghost, Smith, and I stood there in the silence, every weapon trained on the front door. We didn't wait for long. The door slammed open and the radicals poured in.

"Hello, Lucius," I said. He sneered at me.

"So. You're on their side after all," he said.

"She was right, Lucius. We're all supposed to be on the same side, now," Ghost told him.

"An agent, Ghost," Lucius said, as if he were explaining something to a very small child. "Agent Smith. Or maybe you've had so many cookies you've forgotten exactly who it is that our little human-program there is fucking." He indicated me with his gun. I ground my teeth again; I was rising to the bait.

"Ah, Lucius, you don't have to be so jealous..." I taunted.

"Fuck you," he hissed.

"As you so recently pointed out, that is Smith's job, but thank you for the offer," I said, honey dripping from the words. This time it was Lucius who took the bait. He fired; I dodged. His jaw dropped open in what seemed like slow motion. To him, it must have looked precisely like an agent's movement. I'm no agent, but one or two bullets is nothing after 60 years. Not taking my chances with any more shots, I ducked behind the makeshift barricade that Ghost and Haruka were inhabiting.

All hell had broken loose around us. Smith and Ghost had flipped the couch so that Haruka and Ghost could duck behind it. Smith moved precisely as agents always did; not a single bullet so much as grazed him. All the while he managed to fire back, winging several rebels and taking out a few kneecaps. After all the years I'd cursed his ability to do that, I found myself admiring the artistry of it. Lucius may have been impressed by what I'd done, but if I lived for a thousand years, I doubted I'd ever hold a candle to Smith. In the middle of a hail of gunfire, I found myself wondering if he was avoiding killing shots on purpose.

As it always did, the shooting seemed to go on forever. The carpet ripped up in chunks around us. Glass broke, plaster fell, pictures ripped loose from the walls and fell with resounding crashes. We would peek over the couch barricade only enough to find a clean shot and take it, and the rebels were doing the same around the door frame. Both sides had their casualties already. Haruka had taken a shot in the left upper arm, and Ghost had several graze wounds on his head & shoulders. I prayed the radicals didn't think about the Oracle & the girls in the bedroom.

"You give us the agent and we're gone," one of the radicals yelled during a momentary pause.

"There is no agent here, for the thousandth time," I yelled, swinging around the couch long enough to fire a shot in the direction of the voice. A yell of pain, then a curse, and more shots fired. Another pause. Then the most horrifying sound I'd ever heard in my life. Sati's high voice, taut in panic. "_Tirzah_!"

I whirled up and around the couch in panic just in time to see Tirzah standing calmly in the room and a tall, thin radical raising his gun. I couldn't move fast enough. There was no way I could make it in time, and no way I could start firing again without the possibility of hitting Tirzah. The tall man fired at the tiny girl standing halfway between the two groups. Haruka and Ghost stood horrified as I leaped toward the girl, feeling as though I were moving through syrup. Tirzah was looking the tall man straight in the eye, fearless, as if she knew precisely what she was doing.

For the first time in the history of the Matrix, an agent program used his blinding speed, not to dodge a bullet, but to intercept it. I was fast, but Smith was faster. Smith was across the room and in front of Tirzah faster than the human eye could see. The bullet took him in the center of his chest.

The sound of his knees hitting the floor will resound in my head for the rest of my immortal life.

I don't remember crossing the room. I don't remember drawing the daggers. I don't remember a lot of what happened that morning, but I remember the stunned look on the tall man's face as I wrenched my dagger from his ruined throat. I heard a voice screaming--a horrible sound of terror mingled with rage mingled with grief mingled with pure hatred. I didn't realize until long afterward that the voice had been my own.

I whirled around to find Lucius bearing down on me. Dagger under the chin, and I drove it straight up through his jaw & into his sinus cavity. Two women next. Twins, it seemed. I punched one in the stomach & the other in the face, and thrust the daggers between both their lowest vertebrae as they stumbled past me. I wondered idly if doing that here would paralyze them in the Real. I took both eyes from a boy of no more than 17, then whirled halfway around to bury my left dagger to the hilt in the chest of a stunned woman with green hair. Then, as quickly as they'd come at me, they were gone. No more came.

I looked up to find the last rebels had dropped their weapons & were staring at me with a horrible mix of terror and awe. I shook with restraint; I wanted to rip their throats out. A young girl looked me right in the eyes, gave a strangled cry, and seemed to try and hide inside herself. Then I heard Tirzah crying. Tirzah. Smith.

I flew across the room. He was lying against the wall, blood pouring from his chest, soaking one of his favorite blue shirts. "I rather liked this shirt," he told me, gasping. Color was draining from his face.

"Oh gods, Smith, I'll buy you a thousand shirts just like it. Please, just be still and don't talk," I told him. My voice was quivering. I tried to stop the bleeding.

"I'm sorry, Etna," his voice was a little more firm. I looked at the azure eyes I was always admiring. "I don't think that will do any good."

My world seemed to tremble. "Smith...Smith what are you talking about? You'll be all right. Just don't move." My voice was high and frantic now; I was starting to panic. "Smith, please... You _promised_." I wouldn't have to grieve his death.

He gave a half-smile. "I didn't mean to lie to you, Etna. I really didn't think..." He looked at me. His eyes were sad; I could've drowned in the sheer misery in those eyes. "I'm sorry." His eyes changed just slightly; I could read love in them now, and he smiled. Not the smirk or the smug grin or the polite quirk of the lips. He gave me a genuine smile that touched his eyes. Then he sighed, closed his eyes, and his hand went limp against mine.

-----------

_Another Author's Note: Again, I had to listen to music to get a scene right. During Etna's momentary insanity, I listened to "One Step Closer" by Linkin Park and "Halloween" by Dave Matthews Band (which my husband refers to as the "apologize to Dave Matthews right now so he doesn't kill us all" song)._


	12. Chapter 12

I drew Smith's silent form into my lap and leaned against the wall, a horrible white haze clouding everything. I didn't hear a lot of what went on afterward. I just sat, cradling him. People came and went. They kept trying to move my hands, and I kept refusing. Haruka was jacked-out, as was Tirzah. Tamar & Ghost stayed, guarding the radicals who were left. I think they tried to talk to me, but I couldn't hear them. There was a rushing sound covering everything else. I was in a thick fog no one else seemed to see.

Morpheus came, with Niobe. Ghost and Tamar gave the morning's events, I thought. I caught only snippets; the rushing roar in my ears saw to that.

"Six of them..."

"...shot at Etna; did you know she can dodge..."

"...in front of Tirzah, right in front of her..."

"...never seen anyone use a dagger like that..."

"...hasn't said a word..."

"...you see the rings?"

"...won't let go of him..."

"...saved her life...took the bullet _intentionally._"

Morpheus leaned over to say something to me. I stared at him blankly. He'd always been one who treated me as human, or at least no differently than he treated anyone else. His lips were moving. I couldn't tell what he was saying, though. I saw Niobe's eyes travel from Smith's ring to mine, and saw her brows furrow as she looked back at Morpheus. She said something and shook her head. When they left, they took the radicals with them. The radicals couldn't seem to look at me; the young girl seemed to be wracked with sobs. Vaguely, I wondered why. Hadn't she got what she wanted? I smoothed Smith's hair; it seemed to be slightly rumpled. There. That was better.

I noticed when everything got quiet. People had stopped trying to take Smith from me, and people had stopped talking. There weren't any more redpills in the room. In fact, there wasn't anyone in the room.

"You lied to me, Smith," I chastised him. My voice was the same as it always was, but I felt a hollow ring behind it. "You _lied to me_. You weren't supposed to leave me. You said I wouldn't have to feel this way over you. I'm more alone now than I was before," my voice began to crack, but I kept ranting. I couldn't stop. "How could you do this to me, you selfish bastard? How am I supposed to go back to the way I was before? I should have left you in the damned alley!" I was yelling now, and my voice broke into a thousand pieces. I clutched him closer and sobbed into his hair.

"I'm not sure that would've been the wisest course of action," a calm masculine voice said. I started, and looked up.

An older gentleman in a pristine suit was looking down at me, standing next to the Oracle. The man had a beard and mustache, neatly trimmed, and was immaculately pressed and washed. He took a step closer, and I tightened my grip on Smith.

"You aren't taking him," I whispered. The Oracle made a choked sound.

"Do you know who I am?" the man asked me. I shook my head. "Most call me the Architect."

That registered, somewhere in my pain-fogged mind. "The Creator?" I asked, looking up. Comprehension dawned, and I saw a sudden ray of hope in getting out of this horrid swamp of pain. "Have you come to delete me?" I asked hopefully, a little breathless. I am an anomaly, after all. I take up space and resources, and offer nothing useful to the Matrix in return. If Smith was gone, I saw no reason to fear deletion for myself. I was getting tired of immortality anyway.

"No, Etna."

"Why in the hell not?" I snapped at him. "I'm a waste of space and I have nothing to offer you." I changed my tone to pleading. "Please. Can't you just get it over with?"

"Nothing to offer." The Architect knelt on one knee to put himself at my level. "You don't realize what you could be, do you?" I looked at him blankly. "You are a human consciousness copied into code. You could be the most powerful intuitive program in existence. How much could the machines learn from your code--from the way you think and function?" He pointed to Smith. "Look at him. Look at his code; I know you can see it. Have you never stopped to think that you can manipulate what you can see? You are a true learning program, without limits or parameters. There may be no end to what I can teach you to be."

"Etna, do you not realize yet what your purpose is?" The Oracle had addressed me. I looked at her, numb. "Etna, you may be the only program in the Matrix capable of learning to do almost anything. Pure humanity in code. Look at what you've already done to Smith, Etna! A killing machine. A flawed defense program. You were the catalyst for such a change that he just gave his life to save someone else," she sounded pleased. "Neither of you had any idea what you are capable of. This could be the bridge to making this peace truly last."

I found I didn't care about the peace. I didnt care about what the Architect could teach me. Even the scientist in me was numbed, deadened. What was all that knowledge to me now? I pressed my cheek against Smith's hair. "Don't want it without him. Please, please make this end." I looked at them, and I could feel the pure misery in my own eyes.

"I am not here to delete you, but I believe I can grant your request to 'make this end'," the Architect said, standing, then gave the Oracle a look of longsuffering patience. "A friend of yours has called in a favor for you. As she said, it seems you've been the catalyst for some major changes in this particular agent program. The Oracle here believes that warrants further investigation." He sighed patiently. "Though I have little use for flawed or corrupted programs, she insists there is much to be learned from him, and from his interactions with you. I admit I am intrigued that nothing more than ordinary interaction with you could produce such a profound change in what I thought was relatively stable code. I may be able to learn more about you from careful study of him." He looked simultaneously intrigued and calculating.

"Furthermore, other friends of yours have insisted that as the Smith program actually sacrificed himself for that human child, it would be beneficial to the peace process if I'd consider doing something a little out of the ordinary. They seem to see self-sacrifice as some sort of supremely important human quality. Apparently they're intrigued to find the concept in a program." Did he just roll his eyes? I got the impression he found human ignorance singularly impressive. "As the Oracle has just indicated, they also believe that you two could be the best change at a bridge between human and machine. Ambassadors, if you will.

"As the Oracle has proven to be correct in the past, inexplicable though it was, and as your other friends are important to the cease fire agreement, I will take a 'leap of faith', as it were." He made "leap of faith" sound like the most vile curse word possible. I blinked in confusion.

"I created the agent programs, Etna." He tapped a pen he'd taken from his coat pocket. "Repairing minor damage to one isn't normally something I'd take care of myself, but this does seem to be a special circumstance."

I looked down at Smith's still form, lying across my lap, my arms wrapped around his shoulders & neck. I saw the code repaired. It corrected itself, began to move again. I saw the code for the bullet disappear. My human eyes saw the hole close itself, and saw Smith's chest rise & fall. My inner scientist whirled back into life as I took the entire thing in; I _could_ see what the Architect had done. Was it possible I could learn to replicate it?

But that was my last coherent thought for a long time, because then Smith's cobalt eyes opened and blinked in surprise.


	13. Chapter 13

With the first glimpse of that blue, it was as though all the color shot back into the world for me. Chaos reigned for a few minutes; Smith appeared stunned and looked from the Architect to the Oracle to me several times, I found myself entirely unable to speak and so just kissed Smith within an inch of his life, the Oracle laughed, and again I thought I saw the Architect roll his eyes. For someone who claimed to be an emotionless program, he certainly had contempt in spades. 

I couldn't stop staring at Smith. For the second time in my life, I felt if I blinked he'd disappear and then I wouldn't know where he was. After kissing him soundly several times, I held him at arm's length to look at him. There wasn't a trace of what had happened only hours ago.

"It seems he's fixed my shirt," he said. I opened my mouth indignantly before I saw his impish look. I laughed, weak and deflated. I rested my forehead on his shoulder and he wrapped his arms around me tightly. "I am so sorry, Etna," he whispered into my hair. "I didn't mean for it to happen. I..."

"Shut up," I told him, and held him just as tightly. "You owe me, agent. You'll be paying me back for years over this." I felt, rather than saw, him smile. He didn't seem to mind.

Once everything had calmed down, I noticed Morpheus, Niobe, Ghost and Tamar had reappeared from wherever they'd gone before. They seemed slightly surprised; I imagine they'd half-doubted the Architect would do anything about Smith. Open-minded as they were, there was a latent amount of mistrust there.

Morpheus thanked Smith. "I do not believe that anyone can say what the repercussions of your actions today will be. I do believe that you've irrevocably changed something, however, and on behalf of the residents of Zion, I thank you." Tamar thanked him too; wordlessly she hugged him so tightly it looked like he might snap in half. An idle bit of my brain wondered at seeing an unplugged redpill actually hugging Agent Smith.

Morpheus addressed me, next. "I believe there was some mention of an ambassador--a liason between the Matrix administration and Zion. I will not mince words. Will you be that liason for us?" I had known this was coming; the Architect had said as much. It felt strange to be handed such responsibility when so short a time ago I had been the object of only wary, tentative trust. I nodded, but such a heavy question required a bit more of an answer.

"I will, Morpheus, and I will do all that I can to be worthy of the honor." He nodded and seemed satisfied; Tamar & Ghost fairly glowed with pride.

"Now that that's taken care of," the Architect said briskly, "there is the question of what you have to offer us."

What I had to offer was a great deal, as it turned out. I was never intended to be a program, and therefore had neither limitations on what I could learn nor parameters stating what I should do. This left me quite open to possibilities, and I began working with both the Architect and the Oracle.

The Architect's work appealed to the scientist in me, with its calculated nature. I proved to be especially adept at correcting and maintaining certain aspects of the Matrix simulated environment. I became the resident Matrix expert on humans and their needs and wants. The simulation lacked in several aspects as far as I was concerned, and the Architect and I began an exchange: he showed me how to fix things and I showed him what needed fixing. I joked to Smith that I'd always wanted to change the world. The "world" suddenly began to see an increase in pleasant weather...and volcanic eruptions in remote locations. The Architect let me have my fun.

The Oracle's work proved more difficult for me to grasp. I'd never been that great at predicting or manipulating people, and the Oracle seemed to pull strings that people didn't even know they had. At first, my very existence seemed to be enough for many redpills. As you can imagine, they did a lot of questioning reality: were they really unplugged? Did they ever really wake up? Many of them took my existence to mean "Does it really matter?" Though I was no longer human, I obviously lived. And because, to them, I was not quite a program, they saw my feelings & actions as somehow more valid than those of the Exiles. Over time, though, it seemed they began to see the Exiles as something more than just programs. As the humans & Exiles began to interact more and more, the Exiles' place in the Matrix became less perilous and more accepted. It seemed I was something of a "bridge" between human and machine.

As for the Zionists, Smith's sacrifice for Tirzah made quite an impression. Though the machines never intended it and even Smith himself hadn't known he would do it, his selfless act had been precisely what was needed to gain any amount of trust from the redpills; this was what the Oracle had hoped would happen when she left him with me. The radical faction remained, but in much smaller, less vocal form. For most humans, the idea of an agent actually taking a bullet to save a human child was a powerful image, and exactly what they wanted to hear. Yes, they'd heard that programs claimed human emotion, such as love (they'd all heard the story of Sati's parents by now), but Smith was the example they now had on hand. Not only had he made a very dramatic sacrifice for a small child, but his affection for and devotion to me was obvious. Perhaps it had begun with me as the "folk hero", but in the weeks after the radical attack, Smith quickly gained a following among the Zionites. Much to his discomfort, of course. He was accustomed to redpills running in abject terror, and had become used to them glaring at him like cats at an unfamiliar dog, but he was entirely unequipped to deal with shy stares and blushes.

The most startling phenomenon to come out of the whole ordeal was a renewed interest in the accident that had resulted in my state. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised; immortality has always been a point of fascination for humanity. It was Tirzah who finally figured it out, after years of study on the part of many human scientists and Exile programs. She tested it on herself, and so became the first person to take on this status intentionally. To my utter astonishment, many redpills have since chosen my unintended path. For some, it's the considerable freedom we are afforded within the Matrix. For others, it's the promise of immortality; in fact, the Zionites have come to call us "Infinites". A few see it as the best of both worlds. I suppose they could be right; my view of the situation is colored by 60 years of pure loneliness, and so remains slightly less rose-colored.

Smith and I are not the only Infinite/program couple. This morning we attended a wedding that utterly destroyed the Architect's theory that Smith was simply a flawed, anomalous agent program.

"What is the point in this ceremony?" Smith asked me. I was needlessly straightening his tie.

"Human tradition," I explained.

"Pointless. It isn't to us they make the vows."

"No, but making them publicly allows them to hold themselves more accountable for what they promise each other."

"We didn't need one," he pointed out. I told him he was a hopeless non-romantic, and finally said that it was an excuse to see him in a nice suit. And then later to get him out of it. Pointless as he thought the ceremony was, we went. Perhaps the Oracle is still teaching me to push and pull people, but I need no help with Smith. Besides, he really does look very, very nice in that suit. And those sunglasses.

The wedding was quite beautiful; Tirzah was radiant and Agent Thompson actually blushed. I took full credit for the splendid weather and the gorgeous state of the landscaping in the park. The Oracle beamed the entire time and the Architect looked supremely bored, but it didn't escape my notice that he was there and they sat together. I remembered the look on Tirzah's face on the day Smith was shot; as if she knew she was playing an important role. I wondered if that very young girl knew what would be the end result of her action.

Sitting tonight on the balcony with Smith, watching the sun set while the breeze flips the hem of my silk robe about my ankles, I doubt it. Neither of us had known at the beginning of our own journeys where they'd end, but the Oracle had been right. Every time he gives me one of these rare, genuine smiles, I know we've both found our purpose.


End file.
